Diet and/or Exercise fads - let's name (and describe, if necessary) them. List personal experience if applicable.

The Beverly Hills diet

the funny thing is, while the author advocated eating only fruit (especially pineapple, pineapple was a like the antidote to the consumption of fatty foods), some reporter interviewed her and said that Judy ate tons of bread and butter while the interview was going.

Weight Watchers

I joined in 2006 when my doctor wanted me to lose 40 pounds. I ended up losing 50 pounds from Memorial Day - Columbus Day that summer. I really found it easy (at the time we had to write everything down in a journal to determine our points - nothing on phones or computers); it was a pamphlet called the 'Weekly Tracker'. I attended weekly meetings - even when I went away on vacation or away for business. I exercised every other day by walking 3 miles - I never felt so good in my life, at age 42. I did yoga on the other days - and loved it. I got a lot of compliments from friends, family, etc. I didn't do it for the compliments - I did it because I wanted to feel better.

Slowly - over five years or so, I gained it back.

I now need to lose about 80 pounds - most of it was added on during the pandemic. I've tried rejoining WW but I just can't stick with it - I don't like their new point system, I don't like tracking on my phone. It's just not me. I wish I could because I did so well with it the first time around.

Richard Simmons Deal-A-Meal Cards

Two words: Tae Bo.

Sweatin’ to the Oldies with Richard “Legs” Simmons.

Tae Bo was hard. I was always sore after doing that workout.

Frenetic aerobic exercise (see video below), step aerobics, Sweatin' to the Oldies, Zumba, Turbo Jam, P90X, Shaun T's Insanity, Pilates, Drumstick fitness where you use weighted drumsticks as part of the workout.

I've done a lot of exercise DVDs over the years and Richard Simmons was the best of all of them. I still do his routines, a lot of them are on YouTube. Zumba and Turbo Jam are also a lot of fun.

Susan Powter - "Stop the Insanity!" Endless infomercials of this at all hours of the day.

[quote] Powter once said she rented a Jane Fonda Workout tape and found it impenetrable. Instead, she walked, ate only when hungry, cut out sugar and processed foods, and eventually slimmed down to 114 pounds.

She was also famous for saying "fat makes you fat!"

I, personally, never bought any of her offerings (books, tapes, etc.) because I was so poor at the time. I don't know anyone personally who tried it either, but man, she was all over TV yelling all the time for a quite a few years in the 90s.

Prance!

Adkins - the craving for carbs wins out every damn time. After a while even a hot dog bun makes you salivate.

Susan Powter also admitted to being a beer alcoholic. She was drinking something crazy like 18 beers per day. I've forgotten the exact amount, but it was so much that I figured that she must've been drunk during all of her waking hours.

Atkins?

Yes, I meant Atkins. Ketones out of whack today.

Shake Weight:

Thighmaster.

Ah, beat me to it r15!!

So here's the "upgraded version" of her thighmaster (I never actually heard of this version until I did a GIS for the thighmaster!). Is it exercise equipment or a stealth vibrator??

Cabbage soup diet in the 90s. My office smelled like a fart box for months.

I’ve got chia seed pudding chilling in the fridge for tomorrow morning. That probably counts but I draw the line at buying mason jars.

Ha, r18! Coincidentally, i actually recently looked up a chocolate chia seed pudding recipe that I bookmarked and intend to make; I even saved leftover "Oui" yogurt jars so I can use them if they are tasty enough for me to make them regularly.

Let me know how yours turns out!

Here's one: caffeine pills that resembled popular street drugs. You could find them in the back of some magazines and order them by mail. Late 80s. Did not reduce appetite at all.

The Christian diet!

Do any of you guys remember Kimmer/Kimkins? There was a big scandal about her about 15 years ago. There was a website called “Low Carb Friends” - I was a Huge message board forum for all low carb diets. …. A woman named Kimmer basically took the Super strict Dr Stillman diet and put a twist on it and called it Kimkins. she said she had been hugely obese and dropped 150 lbs in a few months - she started giving advice - her diet really worked - she posted beautiful photos of herself and started her own website and people flocked to her for advice and paid her.Her diet made the front page of Woman’s World Magazine. Then the people started getting dick and their hair started falling out. Someone hired a private investigator. They found out that Kimmer had been using Fussian mail order bride photos for her “After” photos. The investigator took and posted photos of morbidly obese Kimmer on a shopping spree and posted it on line. She was sued and all the stuff about her diet were scrubbed from the site. Low carb Friends closed a few years later. The funny thing was - Kimmer was a really snappy writer and was very interesting to follow. Until she got caught.

getting SICK - not Dick!!^^^^

I'd like to see these "Fussian" mail order brides.

always get more dick when I go low carb R22

The Celery Fad.

I didn't take part but was pissed when I had to pay 8 to 10 dollars for celery -- if it was even available -- because all of these bloody brainless bimbos were buying it up for their "I can't cook smoothies".

Cocaine and cigarettes. Worked wonders for me back in the 80's.

I lost 40 lbs. (and have kept it off for two years so far) by following the 16-8 fast as discussed here on DL. It worked for me.

Another perq for Datalounge denizens!

Deal-a meal wasn't a fad diet. It was a standard calorie counting diet with a small gimmick. We use apps that do the same thing these days.

French Women Don't Get Fat.

It was on TV, and I caught an elder gay in line at the market buying leeks same as my mother and I an hour after it aired.

[quote]Here's one: caffeine pills that resembled popular street drugs. You could find them in the back of some magazines and order them by mail. Late 80s. Did not reduce appetite at all.

But they did give you the shakes & heartburn that you radiated to your knees.

I remember doing the Jane Fonda workout; I could be wrong about this, but it seems like she kind of popularized wearing sporty workout clothes as opposed to just a t-shirt & shorts/sweats.

Allī, the pill that absorbs dietary fat in your stomach and makes you shit your pants.

^I took that pill & while I never lost any substantial amount of weight, it made you think about what you ate since certain foods would take the express lane out of your system. But it just wasn't worth the $$

R22 You had me at 'getting dick' - I was ready to sign up now !

I found the chia seed pudding all but inedible on its own, R19. It looks gross and has bad mouthfeel. I put out-of-season strawberries in, which helped a lot, but if I were not as motivated as I am I’d never go for it at all.

However, as it is, I need to lower my blood pressure and if the claims made for it are true then it’ll be worth it.

And I think you may be onto something with those yogurt containers. My mom hated to cook but when she did she tried to make the presentation attractive and the food nutritious and I can see that that might help me choke this glop down.

I’m going to look up a chocolate recipe — thank you for that idea — and see if it goes down easier. I’ve still got a whole bag of these little tiny seeds to get through.

Pizza, smoked salmon, movie theater popcorn with mass quantities of salt — I ate, and loved, excessive amounts of sodium for a lifetime and now that the bill is finally coming due I don’t really have much room to complain. If eating chia pudding will lessen my risk of stroke and heart disease, OKAY. It’s certainly ridiculously low in calories!

r34 here's the Overnight Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding recipe I'm going to try, in case you want to try it before I get a chance. I'm going to substitute raw honey from my friend for the maple syrup.

I hear what you're saying about having to pay the price for your habits: I've been a 120 over 65 person my entire life (54 years old now), even when I was considered morbidly obese (I haven't been for 20 years now). I drank alcohol rather heavily over the past 3+ years and now have high blood pressure and am on medication. I quit drinking altogether almost 5 months ago but my pressure has not gone down enough. It's definitely not really diet related for me as I don't gravitate toward overly salty or overly fatty foods, nor do I care much for sweets. I'm trying to eat more fruits/vegetables, get into a regular exercise routine and ingest whatever foods and supplements that will help lower my pressure further.

Here's another entry: AYDS diet candies. Never tried them myself, so no firsthand experience.

There was also some supplement that would expand in your stomach to make you feel full longer. This was in the 80s and was found to be dangerous and subsequently removed from the market, but I really have no idea what it was called or even what it was.

Scarily enough, in trying to find out the stomach-expanding supplement, I found out that injections of BOTOX into the stomach have been used for weight loss; apparently it relaxes the stomach muscles and causes delayed stomach emptying (much like current fad Ozempic), to make you feel fuller longer. That sounds fucking scary, but I found it on the Johns Hopkins website, of all places!!

Mounjaro (tirpetazide) -- like Ozempic but better.

Lost 30 pounds in 4 months. Ate a lot less, didn't really exercise.

We’re running on parallel tracks, R35. I’m gonna go to the gym and row for a few minutes now (I’m not good for any more than that yet; I only started this week) but on the way home I’m gonna pick up cacao powder and vanilla extract.

I’m overhauling my kitchen to make all these changes more habitual because it’s either that or meds for blood pressure, and that’s powerful motivation.

And kudos to you for not indulging in self pity over the fact that your blood pressure hasn’t decreased in defiance of the meds yet. I’d be fulminating at an unfair fate!

A friend has begun using a CPAP machine and reports that her bp has gone down, when a couple years of tweaking meds didn’t do the job, but I really don’t want to go that way. So, it’s the old diet-and-exercise for me.

One question, R35. Do you think it makes a significant difference of any kind to use non-dairy milk? I see it in recipe after recipe and I don’t know why.

I'm not R35, but I've made chia "pudding" with soy milk. It works. It's the texture (slimy) and mouthfeel that I don't like, as another poster said.

I agree, Tae Bo is pretty tough r6! I stuck with it for a while several years ago. Hmmmm, maybe I'll dust off those DVDs.

R14, you could use the Shake Weight while sitting in your Hawaii Chair!

r38 I'm on the lowest dose of blood pressure meds (5 mg lisiniprol daily), and it's brought it down maybe 5 points, but not enough. I'd rather not take it, but for right now, I'm going to keep taking it until I see a more significant drop.

In terms of dairy, I stopped buying milk and creamer a long time ago, and really only use it if a recipe REALLY needs heavy cream. But, I can't say I steer away from dairy products altogether...I eat all types of cheeses, which include cow's milk cheese. I also use powdered whole milk for tea and coffee often, so I'm not dairy free by any means. That said, I do try to use plant based milks if I can. I'm also going to start taking calcium as a supplement, knowing that I really don't get enough of it in my diet. I ate very little food when I was drinking heavily, so ended up being very deficient in all kinds of things which I've had to correct with food and supps. I want to give my body the best chance it has to recover from my transgressions, and that includes supplementing things I know I just don't get enough of through diet. Iron is one of those things, as is Vitamin D - I take those because I am chronically low in Iron and because I don't do dairy very often, and was very deficient in Vit D so was prescribed this supplement (insurance pays for it).

In terms of dairy subs (and more to your question), I have tried Oat Milk, Almond Milk, Hemp Milk and Soy Milk. I think the one I like the best is Oat Milk as it has a creamier texture, but right now I'm steering more toward Almond Milk as the benefits of Almonds are plentiful and I can use it for most things (except the heavy cream-reliant recipes, which I make very sporadically, usually for a special occasion/get-together/holiday). Hemp Milk was probably my least favorite and Soy Milk is just okay - I'd use it if it was offered.

Exercise has been kind of tough as we've had SO MUCH rain lately where I live. Can't afford a gym membership right now, but now that the rain appears to be letting up, I'm aiming towards getting 3 miles of walking in every other day or maybe 1.5 miles daily if I can. I also have an elliptical I inherited from a neighbor, but the electronics don't work on it so it's stuck on the highest resistance - I can only manage 10 minutes right now when I use it. I'll take it though and try to increase my time, so if it's raining I don't really have an excuse to not exercise.

I'll add another entry to this list of fads: [bold] Tony Little's Gazelle exerciser.[/bold] I didn't buy it, but have tried it. I have never known anyone who used it successfully for weight loss though.

You are an inspiration, R41.

(Wasn’t that Charlton Heston’s number when he was chained to his oar in the galley???)

How about good ol' fashion calorie counting: daily calories ingested are less than daily caloric expenditure.

I want to hear more weird/ridiculous diets or exercise crazes! Bring 'em on!

The Zone Diet

Tapeworm diet

R9, I prefer this video. I’d definitely prance around with this Latino guy if it meant getting to see his huge bulge in his pants flopping around!